Your first veggie ferment!

If you haven’t yet delved into the weird world of veggie ferments, Sally says this carrot recipe is just the right place to start.

“These are the best introduction to lacto-fermented vegetables we know; the taste is delicious; and the sweetness of the carrots neutralizes the acidity that some people find disagreeable when they are first introduced to lacto-fermented vegetables.” NT page 95

This was the first vegetable I ever fermented, and I agree that it’s a great one for beginners!

Ingredients

To make a quart of ginger carrots, you’ll need:

4 cups grated carrotstightly packed

1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger

1 tablespoon sea salt

4 tablespoons whey(page 87 of NT), if not available, use an additional 1 tablespoon salt

If you use the super-amazing Plan to Eat meal planning site, just add me as a “friend” and you can take each of my recipes that I’ve already uploaded, and add them to your recipe box! Then you can plug them into your meal calendar, have instant shopping lists created with all your ingredients, and more! Here’s my PTE link for Ginger Carrots.

(FYI, in this set of pictures, I’m only making a pint of carrots.)

First, I grated up a very large carrot. I only had the one and it filled up my pint jar pretty nicely.

Grating carrots by hand is a bit of a workout! You could make things a bit easier on yourself by using a food processor, or you can just, you know, feel the burn!

In a bowl, mix the carrots together with the grated ginger, sea salt, and whey (I usually get mine from making yogurt!).

Then, you wanna give the carrots a good beating, so that they release their juices. Sally suggests using the business end of a meat hammer, but I just grabbed a potato smasher that I had handy.

Then, pack everything into your jar, and pound some more.

You’re looking for the juice to start to cover everything, like this:

Be sure to leave about an inch or so of room at the top of the jar. Put the lid on tight, and let those carrots ferment! Three days later, they’ll be ready to store in the refrigerator.

How’d it go?

I always thought the idea of doing fermented vegetables sounded kind of intimidating — not so with these! I mean, shred some carrots, smash them down, add some salt and whey and ginger, and you’re basically done? What the heck was I waiting so long for to try this? Definitely give it a shot if you’d like to test out a nice, easy veggie ferment.

How We Liked It:

Yeah, veggie ferments do take a little getting used to. I found these carrots to be surprisingly salty — I don’t know why I wasn’t expecting that, given the tablespoon of salt in the mix! I guess they smelled so fresh and sweet, that the saltiness seemed out of place.

These fermented carrots, like most veggie ferments, have a distinctive “pickley” taste. It can be a little intense at first. I think the best way to grow a taste for them is to combine bites with other, blander tastes, like a piece of roast meat or white rice. I’m still not at the point where I enjoy just a plain bite of nothing but fermented carrots, but I’m sure I’ll get there. For now, it’s a great way to include a fermented food at lunch or dinner and help with digestion. And I feel so awesome and WAPF-y when I eat them. 🙂

Will you try these for your first veggie ferment? Or if you’re a seasoned fermented carrot eater, do you have any tips for growing a taste for these and learning to love them even more?

Be sure to check out the other installments of 25 Days of Nourishing Traditions:

Comments

This is the first one I tried as well. We definitely did not like the ginger. It overwhelmed the carrots. The next time I made it, I left out the ginger. I use these as an added ingredient to chicken salad, tuna salad, on top of salad, on sandwiches (instead of pickles). I’ve also stirred it into soups, but wonder if I’m losing the good pro-biotics to heat by doing this. I’ve also made straight ginger fermented. It lasts FOREVER this way and is a good addition to middle eastern dishes. I have a friend who likes to add the fermented ginger juice to beer. I’m not there yet.

I recently made my 1st fermented veggie and it was sauerkraut. I really like it. Oops, no I did pickles quite awhile ago. My hubby won’t touch any of this weird stuff and calls me a mad scientist. He is shocked that I drink kombucha and kefir, too.

Is there anyway to make baby carrots whole with this recipe? I think I’d rather have something like that.